The Highest Point, Tibidabo

Last night I was out until almost 4 and then slept till noon today. Therefore I felt that I needed to do something very active to balance out sleeping half of the day. Once I finally dragged myself out of bed around 1, I immediately started getting ready for a big day without knowing where I was going. After showering and eating a little lunch, I started looking over a map to decide whether I wanted to check out the Olympic Park or Tibidabo. I chose the latter and set about discussing how to get there with my host mother. The ride to the base of the mountain was relatively uneventful. I had to walk about a mile uphill where I saw some houses that were absolutely beautiful. On that walk, I ran into a guy from Azerbaijan named Vikrat. He and I walked together for the rest of the way because neither one of us knew exactly where we were going. We finally made it to a part where we had to take an incline lift the rest of the way up the hill. That was pretty fun and gave us the first samples of how high we were going to be. At the top, the view was even better than I could have expected. Since we were both traveling alone, Vikrat and I were able to take pictures for each other. After seeing about all there was to see, he went on his way to continue sight seeing and I stayed behind to play with my camera and just enjoy the view. About an hour later the wind started blowing stronger and it looked like it might rain, so I began my journey back to the apartment. Where it took an hour and a half to get up to the top, it only took about an hour and fifteen minutes to get back home. 

Determined to make up for the previous night, my friend Jazmin and I went to the bar next door to my building. Earlier this week I stopped in for a beer and discovered that it had at least 300 different board games, so I was really excited to return with a friend and play something. We arrived sometime between 10:30 and 11:00. After ordering a couple beers we decided to play Canasta, a pretty popular Uruguayan card game similar to Rummy. I played this a few times in high school, but I didn't remember any of the rules. The owner asked if we needed any help and ended up joining us at the table to oversee our first game. When we were ready to start the second game, he made sure everything was setup right and then just stayed to talk with us. That man is absolutely hilarious. When we would be in a tough spot, he would make sounds like the twilight zone music among other things. At 2:30, when the bar closed I won the game with a completely lucky best case scenario drawing of two cards. The owner attended to everyone paying while we put up the game and then we stuck around and talked to him for a bit more before leaving. I didn't get home until about 3 AM. Jazmin and I vowed that we will go back at least once a week for the next 11 weeks.